Facebook username helped double university's fan base in 6 weeks
In June, Facebook enabled page managers to establish intuitive "usernames" for their pages. This made it possible for companies, celebrities, and organizations to create short, intuitive URLs for their Facebook content (e.g. www.facebook.com/username). Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 4 February, 9:15am
Police Beat: Couple Apprehended, Sent Back to Where they Once Belonged
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by PMC 1stPix I really dug the idea Tom Woodward put in for a ds106 Writing Assignment called “Police Beat” Essentially, identify an innocent seeming song that advocates some odd/criminal behavior and reformat it as a police report style article. tags: WritingAssignments, WritingAssignments328 Here is a report that came in on the wire from Quartzite, Arizona. ——————————— 8< ----------------------------- Quartzite AZ Police Report ID 65-4345E12 Arresttee’s Name(s): Joseph Henderson, Loretta Martin Charges: Possession of Marijuana (A.R.S) 13-3415; Disorderly Conduct, Outstanding Warrants Date/Time: Friday, February 3, 2012, 8:44pm Location: 56 Lizard Lane, Quartzite, AZ 85346 Reporting: Sergeant Willi Fremont At 8:15PM, QPD received an anonymous call about suspicious persons galavanting along Central Blvd. who wer tipping trash cans at the Burger King on... Read more...
CogDogBlog, 4 February, 1:58am
MOOCS on Ice
I was listening to ds106 auto DJ and came across the fun I had with Rowan Peter in Melbourne as he pleaded that George Siemens go down under yo go ice skating. I recalled us conceptualizing the entire Canadian team (Downes, Siemens, and Cormier) to come perform a MOOCS on Ice show. This seemed to deserve a visual. Rowan Peter Promotes Skate with George cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog For the graphic above, I had to do in Aviary, which actually provides a decent amount of editing (layers, selection tools). And the reason for doing this? None worth mentioning. Because I can. Now, how do I make this a ds106b assignment? Read more...
CogDogBlog, 3 February, 10:59pm
Browser wars not as fun to watch as Star Wars
Those renegade funsters at Google today released their own web browser called Google Chrome. You can read all about it it on their site so I won't go into to much, but I do want to mention two things. Read more...
templatedata, 3 February, 9:15pm
Share Your Suggestions How to Be a Better Photographer
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Next week we start a two week segment of ds106 focussed (get it?) on photography. I’m putting out a request to add your suggestions in an open Google doc at http://bit.ly/ds106-better-photos. Links to articles are great, but I am really looking for personal strategies and ideas that would help my students refine their approach to visualizing, composing, etc- not just the technical stuff, the things that move one from snapshots to art. For example, Brian Metcalfe shared this audio narrated slideshow by Darren Kuropatawa: Developing Your Photographic Eye View another webinar from Darren Kuropatwa Maybe I can arm twist Alec or Dean into echoing it, they do well with these Google Doc Tom Sawyer Fence Painting gigs. Hint. Ahem. The link. http://bit.ly/ds106-better-photos Read more...
CogDogBlog, 3 February, 2:58pm
Fat Cats Playing Poker with Dogs
Fine art, indeed, this limited edition original painting is available for auction coming soon. This is my bit for the Fat Cats Make Art Better ds106 assignment contributed by Annie Belle who is just rocking the class so far. The instructions, if you please… Using this site: http://fatcatart.ru/category/klassy-ka/ as a platform for ideas, and using Photoshop (or something like it) as your tool, place a fat cat into a photo of a classic art piece. The goal is to make it convincing: make the art become on with the cat. Most of all, enjoy! :0) And remember, fat cats make art better. (Tags for this assignment are VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments334) I use “classic art” in its most literal sense, for what gallery is not complete without a large painting of Dogs PLaying Poker? For this one, I found the base painting on flickr (search “dogs poker” in compfight.com) cc licensed ( [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 3 February, 11:56am
More Vinyl with Gardner
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog My last stop before arriving in Fredericksburg was an overnight visit with Gardner Campbell, in Blacksburg VA, and what evening of great food and conversation does not get greater when he says, “Do you want to hear some vinyl?” Is the sky up there? Of course I do, especially given the bag of gold that was our last conversation in October of 2011. My question is, how about if I broadcast to ds106 radio? And thus we go- I have about an hour and forty minutes (see below), but missed recording the first section where he played “Rocks Off” and “Loving Cup: from Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones. This was timely, considering I had a little audio clip to play back. Over last year, I’ve been working my way through the audio book version of Keith Richards’ [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 3 February, 1:43am
Slice 007: Driving Down to Cottonwood
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m catching up on my audio reflections, this one is from before I left Arizona. On January 22, the weekend before I left, I drove down to Cottonwood Arizona to visit Todd Conaway. It’s a majestic drive down Highway 260, falling off of the top of the Mogollon Rim down through Campe Verde. Slices of Life 007 Most of this slice was reflecting on my first class of teaching ds106 for the University of Mary Washington, albeit remotely from Strawberry, via Skyoe with the help of Jim Groom. The first meeting went fairly well, me introducing the class and the students introducing themselves. I was pretty darn nervous, and felt the combination of that excitement and the drain of energy after being tuned in for that session. It is hardly the best way to teach, and is only a bridge [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 3 February, 1:01am
Parked. Finally.
cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by michale Red Dog parked in Fredericksburg, Virginia on Monday afternoon, and has not moved since. It feels both odd and rewarding to not be in motion, yet I am still very much in a place of transition. Here is the place to insert the standard apology for not blogging. There is a queue of backlog posts, at least 3 or 4 Slices of Life audio to hang here. For the quick recap, I rushed here to be present in person to teach my section of ds106. I have a teaching blog set up using the same instructions we give students at http://106tricks.net – I was using Feed WordPress to pull posts in here, but noticed they were double posted and thrice tweeted. I might just put a sidebar RSS feed widget. In some ways my start was a side parallel of [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 2 February, 2:12pm
Responsive Web Design in #highered: One Design to Rule Them All?
My latest University Business column is now available in the February issue as well as online: ” Responsive Web Design in Higher Education: One Design to Rule Them All?” In this column, I make the case for Responsive Web Design in higher ed by sharing some data, examples and tips from early adopters (even the [...] Read more...
collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed, 2 February, 7:26am
Dealing with Protestors
I spent the morning listening to protestors. As tempting as it is to use this space to poke holes in their arguments and assert my position that’s not very helpful for anybody involved. What is helpful is to recognize that there are likely lessons for everyone who does marketing and communication. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 1 February, 9:16pm
Engaging on a web page... 2 or 10 or 30 seconds?
Back from Florida last night and reading a summary of a recent Carewords research project put together by the client. Just about perfect with one exception... an advisory to people working on their websites that they had about 30 seconds to make an impression and engage with a visitor to the page. Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 1 February, 9:16pm
Bring down IE6
There is a growing movement on the Internet to discontinue support for Internet Explorer 6. Here are some sites all about stopping support for IE6:
Bring down IE6Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals productsQuirksmode - To Hell With Bad Browsers — the sequelStop living in the past Read more...
templatedata, 31 January, 9:17pm
Browser wars: Microsoft strikes back! IE8 now out
Microsoft has officially released Internet explorer 8! I recommend this for anyone who uses Internet Explorer 6 or 7. Read more...
templatedata, 31 January, 9:17pm
Windows Phone 7 Series
Today Microsoft unveiled the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5. It's called Windows Mobile 7 Series and is a complete redesign of their mobile platform. It's very exciting stuff and I'll be very interested the to find how capable it's default web browser Internet Explorer will be. Will be it a pocket version of IE8? I hope so because their current mobile IE sucks! Read more...
templatedata, 30 January, 9:15pm
Flash in the new world
If you've been reading the newspaper technology lift outs and tech blogs recently, you would have noticed that the web-o-sphere is all a flutter about Adobe Flash and its future. Read more...
templatedata, 30 January, 9:15pm
Video continues to expand in online student recruitment...
Ono of the themes that emerged during questions and discussions at yesterday's ACT pre-conference workshop was the increasing use of video at college websites to introduce the real people who live and learn at these places. In other words, to humanize them by using the web in a way that goes beyond what student profiles in print can do. Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 30 January, 9:15pm
Recruitment communcation without paper... high interest
Not lone from now I'll start my pre-conference workshop her at the ACT Enrollment Planners Meeting... "Student Recruitment in an Online World: Creating a Marketing Communications Plan in a World Without Paper." Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 30 January, 9:15pm
Easy Way to Monitor Social Media
With a dizzying array of social media initiatives to monitor and maintain, what's an already swamped college PR practitioner to do? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace, Vimeo, Flickr, PhotoBucket ... it seems difficult just to keep track of all the places your brand shows up, or maintain the multitude of "official" sites that have sprung up in these channels. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 30 January, 9:15pm
More evidence of Social Networking's impact
In doing a quick catch up on some reading today I came across two articles about Christian Higher Education, and they both have interesting implications both for private higher education and for the age of social networking (which may be in decline, but that will be another post). Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 30 January, 9:15pm
Actual Discussion
The discussion on Tweeting below is great. Here in my world we are a little behind the times and are just getting into blogs in a bigger way. I see blogs as a key to telling the "Mission" part of the story. People often see the value in having my help in getting information out about the event, but sometimes I get glassy stares when I start to talk about the importance of using marketing communication plans to communicate the vision. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 30 January, 9:15pm
@pizza
Each time you send an email, and perhaps by extension of the convention, you should thank Ray Tomlinson and his inspiration, @rmando’s Pizza Shop in Cambridge, MA. Tomlinson, a graduate of MIT, started work as a programmer in the mid 1960s at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, the firm working with ARPANET to develop the first computer network that evolved into the Internet we know today. The concept of computer messaging had been around a while, but was limited to people sending messages only to other people using the same computer. The program was called SNDMSG, and Tomlinsons idea was to improve it be able to send messages to other nodes on the network BBN was connecting. He typically credits the use of the @ sign to be common sense, of Person AT machine, but BBN insiders know that the idea came from Armando’s Pizzas, which were the favorite snack for [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 29 January, 12:40am
Good web site navigation builds your brand
One point I often make in discussing web site design with clients is that your site’s navigation is also part of your brand. On the web “the brand is the experience and the experience is the brand.”* Read more...
webFYI: design, development, content, usability, marketing, 28 January, 10:40am
Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4
Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 today. 3.5 delivers greater web standards compliance with support for HTML5 and CSS3. It's also much faster that Firefox 3. I would recommend all Firefox users download a copy. Read more...
templatedata, 28 January, 9:16am
Denny Hatch and the wonders of web analytics...
Denny Hatch is an old-time direct marketer who writes a regular online column for Target Marketing. I read itoften to maintain a connection between still-effective direct marketing eternal truths and the modern online world. Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 28 January, 9:16am
Mobile Marketing... another iPhone boost
A long flight yesterday from Detroit to Santa Barbara for today's "Writing Right for the Web" workshop at Fielding Graduate University was more than enough time to read Wall Street Journal and USA Today articles about the new iPhone coming in July. Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 27 January, 9:15pm
Presidents Who Blog... 3 New List Additions
Sitting here at LAX waiting for a late plane from Minneapolis... and thus time to get back and update the list of college and university presidents whoblog. The addition of 3 new people below brings the total list to 39 presidents. Thanks to everyone who sent along these notices. Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 27 January, 9:15pm
Using Insights to shape Facebook page content
In an earlier post, I wrote about how Facebook usernames help grow brand fan pages. As a postscript, the growth of our university's fan base continued through the month of September. The page reached 2,000 fans on October 8. That's 500 new fans in three weeks, or an overall increase of 286% since the page's username was implemented in midsummer. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 27 January, 9:15am
Picking up Harvards crumbs
The article in today’s New York Times “Leaner Times at Harvard: No Cookies” is like a dispatch from a foreign planet. I’m from the west, and I learned long ago that means my ideas about higher education are very different than those in the east. Additionally, I have spent most of my career nearer the other end of the education spectrum where first generation college students studied to find jobs to take families from poverty to prosperity, not from prosperity to prosperity. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 27 January, 9:15am
How many "keywords" are too many keywords?
For about a year now, the closing section on writing for organic search optimization has been the most popular section with many people in my "Writing Right for the Web" workshops. And one of the questions that comes up every time is simply: "How many times can we repeat keywords?" Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 27 January, 9:15am
Daily Create Week 1 Recap
Because the new ds106 Daily create is so distributed, and sometime the tags fail to bring content into the main site, I am requiring my students to either blog their efforts as they go (which some are doing), or post a summary at the end of the week. This will not only make it easier for me to track, it will, more importantly, provide them a way to organize all their DCs in one place. I have already created a screencast on how to do this with WordPress Categories but one can also do it with tags. This week is not over, but I wanted to create a demo. On this blog, I am tagging all my posts for this as dailycreate which becomes likable via http://cogdogblog.com/tag/dailycreate The other thing I want them to do is to embed their content in the blog, not link to it or upload it. [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 27 January, 1:59am
Grant’s Road [Tunes]
This photo is somewhere near the Arizona / New Mexico border. It was fitting to see a sign for Grants Road, since I had been listening to @grantpotter playing a set of road tunes for me on ds106radio. It was epic, and carried me clear from east of Holbrook AZ into Albuquerque NM. It’s just a small example of how generous a spirit Grant is, he deserves more than a road, even more than a town, heck they name a new Canadian province for him. Thanks! Read more...
CogDogBlog, 27 January, 12:28am
Inside Higher Education ran a piece on Monday that proves that faculty gets a fair amount of their nutrition biting the hand that feeds them. Their review of “Wanna-Be U” is interesting, and highlights a problem that most university relations people have to face at some point. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 26 January, 9:17pm
Beloit's New Mindset List
This year’s Mindset List from Beloit College is wistful for me, because I realized as I read it that the people they are describing were born the same year that I graduated from high school. It doesn’t make me feel old exactly, but it does highlight some of the disconnects that can happen when doing communication at a college. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 26 January, 9:17pm
7 Discoveries of a Newly Fledged Tweep
In my last post, I described my belated adoption of Twitter. I promised then to share some of my discoveries as a Twitter neophyte. Here goes: Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 26 January, 9:17pm
State Schools
I remember sitting down with the college president of my school when I was elected student body president and having a candid and free flowing discussion about the future of higher education. Beyond remembering his amazing seer sucker suit, I remember the part of the conversation about fundraising. I remember it, because we agreed that in principal state money should never be used to build a building, because that is the role of the state. Money should flow to scholarships. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 26 January, 9:17pm
Slightly bogus advertising... online, all the time
Sitting in the Sacramento airport this morning on the way back from a web review report at UC Merced, I got online to check email. That takes me through a first Yahoo "news" page. This morning, the lead story is a tease to learn about "degrees to get you hired" to help you move forward in life at least until 2016. Read more...
Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing, 26 January, 9:17pm
No Moss
There is no moss on this roving stone. In 30 minutes, me and Red Dog are headed back up this hill on AZ 87 towards Winslow, turning right on I40, and beelining for the East Coast. A new odyssey. My destination is Fredericksburg VA, where I am teaching a section of ds106 thanks to the awesome support from Jim Groom, who has been pinch hitting for me in class til I show up Monday. I have been beaming in via Skype, but not all in the vein of Dr Oblivion (I have all my hair and sanity). Why go? I still have the means, if I choose, to be a bum for another year, but I want to try some new things, like teaching a real class. I am keen to hang out with the DTLT crew if they will spare me a table, cause Tim, Martha, Andy, and Jim [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 26 January, 10:33am
Has Facebook “Stolen” your FB official #highered page?
After reading Todd Sanders’ blog post on how the official UWGB Facebook page was hijacked by Facebook (basically by switching the institutional page with the “community-generated” FB page), I asked this morning on Twitter and Facebook if anybody else in higher education had noticed any change. Twitter / @karinejoly: Facebook has stolen offici … And, [...] Read more...
collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed, 25 January, 9:25am
Moving the blog
I am moving my business blog efforts to www.supersimplesocialmedia.wordpress.com . Currently, I'm working on ways to help small organizations and business leverage social media. I'd love to see you over in the new wordpress neighborhood. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 25 January, 9:16am
Seven tips on search engine optimization for edu sites
Writing and designing for today’s web is about writing and designing for humans and robots. Read more...
webFYI: design, development, content, usability, marketing, 24 January, 10:40pm
Organizing with WordPress Categories
Justin had a good question about organizing his content, wanting a way to easily show just the things he publishes for his Daily Create. This is a job for Categories (to be fair, it could be done jut the same … Continue reading → Read more...
CogDogBlog, 24 January, 7:26pm
Ready, Set, Blog
In yesterday’s class we made great progress with getting their blogs set up. I’m pleased to see the ones that have already been made their own with different themes.. Now it’s time to fill them up! In the class session … Continue reading → Read more...
CogDogBlog, 24 January, 10:30am
2012/366/23 The Day the MacBookPro Died
cc licensed (BY) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog She went slow and painfully, my MacBookPro. I’m thinking it was Friday in Phoenix, when I inadvertantly forgot to zip the pouch on my backpack, and she fell hard to the concrete. She worked fine over the weekend. But last night, the beachballs begain floating more and more frequently. I scrambled to do disk repair, permissions fix. It seeme dokay when logged in as another user, so I tried to do a fresh time mahcine backup, but it failed. Twice. I did manage to copy my documents and a few more directories to a backuyp drive. The last fail however, was terminal. Now the disk cannot be mounted. My version of Disk Warrior is out of date, and with only by 2002 old iBook, I cannot burn a new DVD upgrade; I am fairly sure the Warrior can save the day. So [...] Read more...
CogDogBlog, 24 January, 2:11am
Top #highered Web and Social Media Conferences for 2012
You might not know it, but I maintain a Google calendar of higher ed events and conferences where I keep track of anything interesting for web and marketing teams working in universities and colleges. It’s a useful tool, but here’s a selection (in chronological order) of the most interesting events with deadlines for registration, call [...] Read more...
collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed, 23 January, 7:30am
Pure is Better
Despite our dog's mournful cries when we cut her nails, my family and I always ignored the television when the Pedi-Paws commercials came on. But my wife bought a one after her mother sent a video via email. Viral videos work, they’re "purer" than standard advertising, distribution can be free, and the videos may have tremendous reach. But can virals be harnessed by higher ed? Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 22 January, 9:15pm
Twitter: Therapy for Graying PR Types
Recently, I have been feeling old. And it’s not the newly prescribed bifocals. I blame Twitter. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 22 January, 9:15pm
College students use social media to rally relief for #Haiti
Across the country, college students are using social media to rally support for relief efforts in Haiti. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 22 January, 9:15pm
Responding to Blogs
If anything shows the changing nature of communications jobs, it’s the strategic decisions related to responding to blogs. Today, I had pretty much planned my day around writing and projects, but I got sucked into responding in the blogosphere which makes me think on a few lessons. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 22 January, 9:15pm
Narrative Theory Applied or Applied Narrative Theory
I have an undergraduate degree and one Masters degree but I find myself sitting in the classroom again headed toward a doctorate and learning about persuasion. It’s a pretty interesting exercise for someone that has practiced some forms of persuasion for the past 15 or so years, but have not thought much about the theory of persuasion. It also highlights a classic faculty and staff rub. Broadly and grossly generalized faculty spend too much time in theory and staff not enough - but I digress. Read more...
U Marketing Guru, 22 January, 9:15pm